The two arrive home and begin watching Back to the Future, which prompts Lolly to inquire about what life is like in 20 years. Although there are no flying cars, there are phones you can play movies on and an entire website with as many TV shows and movies to watch as one could handle, so she’s fairly satisfied with what’s to come. The lack of staying power for the clapper hurts, though. Although she’s anxious to go to sleep, thinking that there’s a chance she could wake up in another time/life, Becca ends her first day back in 1995 without a fiancée and with no idea how to get home – or if she even wants to.
The following morning, Lolly gives Becca a pep talk, calling this the first day of the rest of her life and reminding her that the slate has officially been wiped clean; that does the job at calming her fears about starting over and the frustration at not having much clothes at her disposal, with the latter being resolved due to Lolly volunteering to go to Sean’s and pick up the rest of Becca’s stuff. Becca and her cluttered purse manage to make it to work on time, but she freezes when she sees the elevator. Being that she doesn’t want to chance leaving 1995 before she’s ready, she decides to take the stairs to her floor and surprisingly, that’s not the worst thing that happens during her inaugural voyage as VP of Publicity at the publishing house. Not only are her colleagues gossiping about her leaving Sean, she didn’t actually get the promotion that Simon promised her outside the wedding. When she gets led into the office of the VP of Publicity, she naturally kicks her feet up and takes a minute to adjust to her surroundings; the only problem is that the actual VP of Publicity comes into her office with no idea of who this woman is or what she’s doing bogarting her comfy chair.
Simon then pulls Becca into his office and asks her what she’s done to deserve a promotion of this magnitude. Although Becca goes on about how hard she works, how late she stays, and how well she anticipates his needs, he brushes that off as things that she should be doing anyway and demands that she get him some coffee. After work, Becca goes to the video store where Lolly “works” and laments the fact that she now has to deal with her parents, who she hasn’t seen since she fled the church. Lolly decides to go along, citing the fact that she makes her own schedule and ignoring Becca’s worries about her phoning it in at the store and putting too much of the load on the shoulders of her co-worker Sebastian. Once they get to the Brady residence, a trek that involves another 10 flights of stairs, they find Georgie lamenting the money that was lost in the botched wedding and Lincoln trying to give his wife some perspective – this isn’t about her, she hasn’t stopped to think how Becca is, and gossiping about what happened with her friends is not a productive use of her time. While Becca tries to argue that she simply took the opportunity to start over, something many of us would do if we could, Lolly sneaks away to Jamie’s room, kisses on him, and tells him that she can’t do this anymore because it could hurt Becca. Jamie tries to protest, but before he can do anything, Lolly heads back toward the living room.
After getting read the riot act for not calling her parents following such a big disaster, Becca goes through her wedding presents with Lolly with the intention of returning every one of them, as Emily Post says is appropriate. However, she finds Andy’s gift and gets the idea of personally delivering it herself, with the intention of exploring the connection between them and where they stand in 1995. While Andy is much too considerate to take the present back, he does open the gift for her and shows her the picture frame he got her; what catches Becca’s attention, though, is the picture inside, which came from Spring Lake. She remembers that he told the story of their time at Spring Lake at their rehearsal dinner and, caught up in the moment and moved by the thoughtfulness, kisses him. Unfortunately, Melanie walks into the room right after and Becca leaves mortified, unsure of whether she just ruined the relationship her good friend is in. That night, she confides in Lolly about Andy’s niceness and the following morning, she panics when she gets around Melanie. However, Melanie gives her no sign that she saw what happened, offering some sympathetic words for Becca’s situation before being interrupted by Simon.
Simon mentions novelist Anton DuVossy, a potential client for the publishing house, to Becca, who knows the powerful man he becomes in the future and gets excited at the possibility of working with him. Elsewhere, Lolly goes to Sean’s for Becca’s stuff and finds him decidedly (and understandably) angry about what happened at the altar. Not only is he upset at Becca, he’s upset that Lolly didn’t tell him that this could happen, that Becca might not feel the same way about him as he does about her. His life was supposed to include a happy wedding and a relationship that was meant to be, so he doesn’t take kindly to Lolly’s well-intentioned “sound bytes” meant to console him. She does get under his skin, though, when she urges him to do something if he really wants to be with her – show her that you’re serious about wanting to give things another shot. Back at Ackerman-Halladay Publishing, Becca meets Anton during a meeting where he talks about his next project, a novel about Rwanda, and impresses him with her knowledge of Quarantine State, his current work about a woman in San Francisco. The two then agree to meet that night at a nearby hotel bar to further discuss the book.
When she gets home, she tells Lolly about meeting Anton in her other life, only she was too busy worrying about her honeymoon to realize what an opportunity was in front of her. Even though there was no way to possibly know this guy would become a celebrated novelist, philanthropist, and media mogul, Becca intends to make up for lost time by working her way into his empire on the ground floor. If she can get a job with him now, she can grow right alongside him and eventually get a job steering the ship for one of the most powerful men in the world, which she thinks was the entire purpose of her getting sent back to 1995. After getting ready and mentioning the pair of purple Doc Martens that she remembers Lolly loving, but which Lolly doesn’t have right now, Becca heads to the hotel bar and proceeds to charm Anton. She knows everything there is to know about him and says all the right things, but Anton takes it a step too far and offers her a key to his hotel room. Furious and slightly embarrassed, Becca leaves and kicks herself for falling into such an easy trap. Lolly tries to console her, saying that optimism isn’t a bad thing and it’s understandable that she got blinded by the foxy job offer, but Becca has already recognized that this isn’t the reason she came back to 1995.
While at the bar, Becca reiterates her stance that Lolly shouldn’t be with Jamie, that she wasn’t able to handle his addiction when they were together the first time due to her inability to sit still and be serious, before heading over to change the song playing. She deals with a Xavier reappearance that gets her nowhere closer to an answer on why she’s here and how she can get home, just as Lolly talks to Jamie, who came in before talk turned to him. He assures her that she’s not irresponsible and tells her that he felt something when they were together. Although Lolly felt something, too, she doesn’t want to hurt Becca, yet she does end up excusing herself from the night soon after. Becca gets summoned by Simon anyway, but when she gets there, she’s faced with another menial task – this time, getting another one of Simon’s hook-ups out of his apartment without letting his boyfriend know what happened. Fed up, Becca lays into her boss, telling him that she needs to be able to live her own life and that she’s tired of dealing with how his extreme insecurity manifests itself as outward rage and severe control issues. Thus, she quits her job in a bid to serve herself for once.
Outside, Becca giddily calls Lolly and leaves an apologetic message, saying that she does love and trust her despite what was said/implied at the bar. She then calls Andy and leaves a message apologizing for the kiss without being too specific, just in case Melanie is listening; she says that what she did was inappropriate and that she acted on impulse, which she shouldn’t have done. Speaking of impulse, Lolly ended up leaving the bar and hooking up with Jamie, which is where she was when Becca called. Elsewhere, Sean finds Becca and offers her a cigarette as a peace offering, which she takes before telling him that she quit her job. He then realizes that her leaving wasn’t about him, necessarily – she’s on a big kick to start over and he just got caught in the crossfire. But the real reason he sought out his ex-fiancée was to give her a ticket to their honeymoon. He thinks they can go back to the beginning and just lounge on the beach while sipping drinks and letting the sunshine work out their problems, so Becca, still feeling something for the man she lived through a fiery, passionate relationship with, apprehensively takes the ticket.
The following morning, Becca reconciles with her mother while the two jog in the park. Just as Georgie admits to being jealous of her daughter’s guts, Becca drops two major bombs – she quit her job and Sean invited her on the honeymoon. And she’s thinking about going, to boot. Although Georgie knows what she would do, she can’t make this choice for Becca; she can just be there for her daughter regardless of the outcome or the choice she does end up making. While Lolly steps her game up at the video store, not content with the idea of being a fuck up, and encounters the girl who gives her the fabled Doc Martens that Becca mentioned, Andy comes over to Becca’s and gives her a kiss, saying that he couldn’t pass up a second chance. Sean, meanwhile, heads on the honeymoon by himself.
Additional thoughts and observations:
–“Well, that was the worst thing that ever happened.” “No, the worst thing that ever happened was when they cancelled My So-Called Life.”
-“Do I look like Six from Blossom?”
-“Is it gluten-free?” “What’s that?” “I don’t know. Everyone’s doing it now.”
-“I’m gonna break your heart.” “Go for it.”
-“Everyone knows the beginning’s the best part.”
-Non-Exhaustive List of 90s Songs Included on Hindsight: Lisa Loeb “Stay”; Mariah Carey “Fantasy”; Gin Blossoms “Found Out About You”; The Soup Dragons “I’m Free”; Soul Asylum “Misery”; Collective Soul “Shine”. All great songs and all time period appropriate, so good for Hindsight. The only song I missed was the one playing when Jamie and Lolly talked at the bar – if you know what that was, feel free to comment because it was just not coming to me.
-If you haven’t checked out the interviews that KSite head honcho Craig did with the cast of Hindsight at VH1’s TCA session, please do so here.
-Let’s talk ratings: Hindsight almost doesn’t have them. The first episode was very low and lost a lot from its lead-in, while the second was even lower. Currently, Hindsight is about on the level of Candidly Nicole and Dating Naked, both shows VH1 renewed late last year; however, as a scripted show, it’s more expensive than a reality show, so there’s likely higher expectations for it, especially given how much it was promoted on the network. The only thing is, though, that Hindsight is so different from a typical VH1 show that the advertising might not have reached the type of viewer who would watch a show like this. And it’s not a “loud” enough show like Hit the Floor (VH1’s other scripted show) so it might be hard for something like this to pull casual viewers.
-What I’m trying to say is that you guys should keep watching (the VH1 app and VOD count) and tell people about this show. Compare it to other shows (Being Erica, Outlander, Drop Dead Diva), go on about the nostalgia factor, mention the strong cast and the stronger female friendship that anchors this show – this is something that deserves to be seen and it’d be a shame if it disappeared without making the mark it should.
-The title sequence is okay. I’ve seen the mirror/duality thing a lot, but otherwise, it’s short, sweet, and gets the point across. And I like the edited G on the show’s title.
-I miss video stores. I mean, Netflix is fine and all, but nothing beats snagging the last copy of a movie you’d been dying to see or discovering something new based solely on the box it came in.
–We do have flying cars. Look out, Jetsons.
-Nice to see this show poke at The Theory of Parallel Universes. And I mean that sincerely. A part of me is curious about what would happen if Becca found herself in another universe that resulted from one of her major decisions, but I know that would make this show something completely different than what it is and I like what it’s going for right now.
-I was kind of fascinated that Becca didn’t want to get on the elevator. I mean, I get it, in that she didn’t want to chance ending up in another year and losing the understanding ear she has in Lolly; plus, there’s the whole matter of wanting to explore her life in 1995 and figure out where she went wrong, whether she should be with Sean, etc. It was just interesting that a clear solution (or at least something pretty plausible) came in front of her and she dismissed it outright.
-Even though it’s not been established how this version of 1995 will impact 2014, if at all, I wonder whether Becca pushing Lolly to be a better person will change their friendship. Could Becca’s nudging keep Lolly from going down the wrong path and get her mind right about her relationship with Jamie? Is this a way for Jamie to avoid the addiction issues he develops later in his life – this positive influence showing itself at a time when he falls into the wrong lifestyle?
-Melanie didn’t show her cards regarding the kiss, but I have to believe that she saw it. Her tone the following day was a bit too knowing and the way the scene was framed made it look like she did see – she just didn’t want to unload at the place she works. Becca probably needs to watch out, though.
-Sebastian saying chillin’ with a hard G was the best.
-Weirdly, I’m most interested in seeing Becca paired with her parents. Georgie highlights the central premise of the show (everybody wants to change things in their past) and I think the dynamic she shares with Becca, that push-pull between the should and the does, is pretty interesting dramatic territory. Plus, Lincoln seems like the type of dad that you love but don’t really connect with on a personal level, so it’d be a good use of time to see how that informed Becca’s relationship choices and what role his marriage to Georgie had in Becca’s vision of what married life should be like.
-I buy that Becca let herself get caught up in the idea of Anton. It was an easy way to reconcile this huge change in her life while avoiding the real issues she needs to be addressing; Becca got to live out a fantasy of hers, that she would woo this soon-to-be powerful man and pull herself up the ladder of success, while staying in denial about her love life and the series of poor choices that resulted in her feeling unfulfilled in 2014. She might have enough life experience to be able to sniff dogs like Anton out, but she let herself get too enamored with the idea of what he could give her and thus allowed herself to be put in a poor position.
-Do you think the purple Doc Martens will convince Lolly that Becca is actually from the future? Although at first I was a bit annoyed that the show went back on Lolly being Becca’s believer (it undermined a great friendship and felt like a case of the Second Episode Blues), I think it was a humanizing moment for her, that while she might be a bit out there anyway, not even she fully believes that her best friend is from the future. And we know how much she loves Becca, so that disbelief said quite a bit.
-Very empowering last quarter of the episode. Becca telling her boss off is something everyone has wanted to do at one time or another, while the kiss from Andy is the type of passion that she had been missing from their 2014 relationship. Becca has been harping on Andy being nice but safe, so the show is evening the playing field more than I expected as far as her romantic life. I assumed that Sean would quickly become the frontrunner, given that television has been not so nice to the “good guys” that get pitted up against “bad boys” in love triangles, so I like the balance in characterization that this episode provided. Andy displayed the type of passion that he hasn’t in 2014, while Sean let go of the anger that ruined his marriage and attempted to reach out to the woman he loves. There’s still no obvious choice for Becca to make and I like that the show is staying neutral.
-Next week on Hindsight: Becca deals with the emotional fallout from her second kiss with Andy, while Lolly avoids Jamie for the good of her friendship with Becca.
